


Ex Nihilo Fihil Fit

by tisfan



Series: MCU Kink Bingo [17]
Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Don't Try This At Home, Drug Use, Dubious Morality, Guilt, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Shotgunning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-19 04:22:47
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13115934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tisfan/pseuds/tisfan
Summary: In the aftermath of the helicarrier battle, Rumlow is desperately injured and calls to the one person who might help him. The Winter Soldier. Who still has a mission to complete.





	Ex Nihilo Fihil Fit

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Shi_Toyu](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shi_Toyu/gifts).



> A/n: Bucky’s consent in here is still both enthusiastic and dubious, as he’s still brainwashed. Rumlow’s consent is also a little dubious, because he’s injured and high as a kite on morphine. You know your own state of mind.
> 
> Sequel to [Quid Pro Quo](https://archiveofourown.org/works/13036281).

The Asset dragged the man ( _Steve, that’s Steve, that’s Steve_ ) to the shore. The man coughed up an obscene amount of water from the river and started breathing, ragged. The Asset looked down at the man. ( _Steve! Steve you fucking idiot, that’s--_ )

“-- james?”

The com unit fritzed in his ear. A crackle of static and then a soft, pained voice. The Asset was already fighting the… the other ( _Bucky_!) in his head, conflicted between his need to finish the mission and his need to save the man ( _Steve_!). The tug of war was so great, the Asset could almost feel his brain being ripped apart.

Which meant that James -- that third and most elusive of the shades that haunted the Asset -- had a target of opportunity and he took it with sly vengeance, shoving both Bucky and the Asset aside.

The Asset didn’t fight.

He never fought the shadows of his past; that was for handlers and words and cryo. It wasn’t his job to keep his fractured brain together.

“... james i need an extraction…”

The Asset retreated with one last look at the man ( _Steve_!) on the side of the water, bleeding and breathing.

…

“Brock, give me your position,” James said into the com. “I’m on my way. Mission failure, the target is still alive.”

“...abort mission…” crackle, pop, hiss… “... ambulance, west on 66. GW hospital. James… I’m… dy--”

No. _No_.

James wasn’t going to lose him. He settled his gear, got his bearings, and started to run.

Everything hurt, everything. His fucking arm was broken and was going to need to be rebroken to set the bone correctly.

At his best, James could run upwards of sixty miles an hour, for about three hours before he’d collapse. Today… not his best day. He barely made it to the hospital ahead of the ambulance. He waited until the driver got out of the vehicle before he hijacked it. Restrained, he pointed his gun at the medical team. “Get out.” They bailed, and James drove.

“Drive it like you stole it, hotshot,” Brock said from the back of the ambulance. His face was covered with a breathing mask; his body was broken and bloody, but he was awake, and those warm brown eyes of his were watching everything with the diligence of a predator.

“I did steal it,” James said, and then he laughed, a short bark of a sound, choppy and ugly. “What happened?”

“Building came down,” Brock told him. “Fucking helicarrier crashed into it.”

James swallowed hard. “My fault--”

Brock waved it away. “Drive first, blame later.”

James drove.

***

There wasn’t pain, and Rumlow wasn’t sure if that was a bad sign or not. He’d been crushed under the building, he’d been burned, he’d been-- why wasn’t there pain?

There was darkness, black and unrelenting. He couldn’t feel anything, it was like he was a series of muddled and confused thoughts with no body attached. Had he died, was he dead.

He forced his tongue to work, tried to work up enough spit to open his mouth. Managed to poke his tongue between his lips; they rasped, dry and chapped, and that was something, at least. He made a sound.

“Shhh.” A voice. “I’m here.” Something cold touched his mouth, a trickle of water, and Rumlow opened his mouth, greedy. Warm fingers, tasting like gun oil, shoved a piece of ice in his mouth.

“Sitrep?”

“Safehouse,” James told him. “You’re in bad shape. Burned. Crushed. Hydra’s fallen. SHIELD, too. Captain America is in the hospital. He’s not dead.” There was the sound of a gun slide being reassembled. The unspoken _yet_.  
  
“Can you finish a mission, now?” Rumlow asked. He didn’t want to doubt, but he’d watched as Bucky, that fucking little puppy, drop-kicked Brooklyn boy, bubbled to the surface. Watched as Pierce tried to slap it out of him, and failed. _Bucky_ , so damn close to the surface and damn Pierce for putting the Asset out there in the first place. Hadn’t the man done his fucking research? Didn’t he know the few times they’d almost lost the Asset before had been because he’d come across something that reminded him of Captain fucking America? (“ _Let’s hear it for Captain America!_ ” It was on the fucking film, for shit’s sake?)

“Ain’t a mission,” James told him.

“Then what is it?”

“It’s _personal_ ,” James said. There was a puff of air, then James’s mouth touched his cheek. “Don’t worry. I’m gonna take care of you. Few days, til you’re stable. Then I’ll get him. I’ll fucking kill him.”

 _For you._ That went unspoken, too.

***

Steve tried to tell himself it was a dream, because none of the rest of it made any goddamn sense at all.

He’d woken up a few times, with Sam sitting next to him. Once with Nat. Fury had been there for about ninety seconds at one point, disguised as a janitor. It wasn’t a look that suited him.

But Steve woke up one night, dark as hell.

Wasn’t even aware that there was another person in the room for a few minutes, then--

“Bucky?”

A shadow detached itself from the wall, stepped forward. It wasn’t the Winter Soldier in his black tactical gear. It wasn’t that ice cold, emotionless face, that killer stride. It wasn’t even the wide eyed terror of a trapped animal that Steve had seen on the helicarrier.

Just a man. In a green coat with a sweatshirt underneath and his hair tucked up under a ballcap. Just a man with healing bruises. He didn’t look lots better than Steve did, probably should have been in a hospital himself.

“No,” Bucky said. “I ain’t your _Bucky_.”

He did have a gun, and Steve would have worried more about that if he cared. He didn’t care. He was so tired, he was still in pain, and his chest ached with the strain of not bolting out of the bed to throw his arms around the man who stood there, not quite hostile, in the middle of his hospital room.

“You know me…”

“I don’t belong to you,” Bucky said. He raised the gun, lowered it again. Took a step closer. There was pain, anger, confusion in those blue eyes.

“You never did,” Steve said, and that much was true. More like Steve had belonged to Bucky. Body, soul, and heart. Everything. He would have done anything for Bucky. “Are you okay, pal?”

“I ain’t your pal, neither,” Bucky said. The gun moved again, threatening.

“Doesn’t matter,” Steve said. “Doesn’t matter if you know me, doesn’t matter if you care about me, none of that matters. I know _you_. I _care_ about you.”

Bucky shook his head. “You _don’t_ know me,” he said. The gun shifted a third time, and Steve tracked its movements.

“Are you here to finish your mission?”

“No missions,” Bucky said. “Hydra’s gone. Pierce is dead. There’s no missions. Just revenge.”

“For what?” Steve was in shock, what the hell had he done to Bucky that Bucky would want revenge?

“You hurt Brock,” Bucky said. He tapped the gun against his thigh a few times.

Steve blinked. Of _course_ he’d hurt Rumlow, Rumlow’d tried to arrest him, succeeded in taking them captive for a while. Rumlow had hurt Sam. Rumlow was fucking Hydra, of-- Steve bit his lip and did the only smart thing he could do. Didn’t say anything.

It was harder than it should have been, not to justify, not to explain. Not to point blame at Sam, or at Bucky himself, or even a Rumlow, who started the whole goddamn thing by being a treacherous snake in the first place.

The silence stretched between them.

Then, finally, Steve couldn’t take it anymore. “It was an accident,” he said. “The helicarrier crashed into the Triskelion. You were there. A lot of people got hurt. I… wish it hadn’t had to be that way.” The price of freedom is high… that’s what he’d said. He was willing to pay it, and yet Steve never was the one who bore that burden. Other people, hundreds of people, had died in the battle. But not Steve.

Bucky’s hand was shaking. “You tried to-- tried to take everything from me,” he snapped. The gun came back up, pointed directly at Steve’s heart.

“Bucky,” Steve burst out, not able to help himself. “What the hell is Rumlow to you?”

Steve shouldn’t have said that, because the pieces of Bucky’s expression fell apart. He was grieving, anguished. _In agony_. What the hell had Hydra done to him, Bucky’d never looked like that, _ever_. Not…

“ _Shut up_! He’s not your _Bucky_. There’s no Bucky here. Bucky’s dead, he’s dead, and we killed him, Hydra killed him. He had nothing. Nothing to hold on to.” He brandished the gun at Steve, and there wasn’t any fear in that room, not from Steve’s side, but Bucky was wild, and there didn’t seem to be anything Steve could do to calm him. It wasn’t like the first few fights, where Winter Soldier was calm, icy. Almost inhuman. “Brock… Brock helps me. He helps me, he takes care of me, he loves me, and _you can’t have him_! He’s mine, he’s mine, and you’re nothing! You’re nothing to me, and why can’t I kill you?” The Winter Soldier was breathing harder, sweating, face wild and yet somehow soft at the same time.

 _Oh. Oh, my god._ Everything south of Steve’s neck went numb with shock and horror. “He’s your lover,” Steve said.

Winter Soldier -- or Bucky, or whoever he was -- actually nodded. Lowered the gun a little.

Right. Steve was going to throw up. He knew a little about brainwashing, about conditioning. Just the things that Natasha had confided in him, but her matter-of-fact retelling of her own trauma, of the things they had done to prepare her for what she became… if they’d even done a fraction of those things to Bucky, it was no wonder he was divorcing himself from the man he’d once been. The man that those things had happened to. “Christ, Buc-- what should I call you? What… what can I do?”

He’d meant _what can I do to help you_.

Instead, the Winter Soldier took it as license to raid Steve’s supplies. Pain pills that Steve didn’t take because they didn’t affect him. The damn IV and the spare bag. He searched the cabinet, took the doctor’s draw kit and a bag full of bandages.

“He’s not dead--” Jesus. Bucky’s captor and handler and liar and probably rapist was still alive and Bucky was going to go _help him_?

“Not if I can do anything about it,” the Winter Soldier told him. “Get more. I don’t care how you do it. A debriding kit. Pain medication. Antibiotics. _You get them for me_.”

“I’ll need time,” Steve said and that was nothing but true.

“Put together a package. Get your bird-friend to put it on the roof for me. No traps, no tricks, or you won’t be the first one to die,” Bucky said. It wasn’t even a threat, just a fact. A cold, ugly fact.

“I’ll do what I can.” Jesus. Even help Rumlow, if it would keep Bucky on a short tether until they could figure out what to do, how to help him, break him out of this.

***

“You didn’t kill him,” Rumlow said. James had washed him down, slow, with a damp cloth. Gave him two pills and an injection -- explained how he’d bugged the man’s room, to keep an eye on things. James couldn’t -- or wouldn’t -- say if he’d hoped the target tried to cheat him, thus earning a quick death, or didn’t, thus helping. In either case, James had tasted and tested everything they’d put in the bag. It would do, for the time being.

James shrugged one shoulder. “He’s useful, for now. We’ll get you patched up, an’ then get the fuck out of here. He’s tryin’ to keep me close. I don’t trust him.” There was just enough puzzlement in his face that Rumlow knew James was fighting his programming. Knew that it was going to be over soon. Cap’s pal, Bucky, was fighting his way to the surface.

“Yeah, stubborn as fuck, that one,” Rumlow said. “I’m just gonna slow you down--”

“I’m not leaving you,” James said. “I got you a present.”

Rumlow raised an eyebrow, then grimaced as it pulled at the damaged skin of his face. “Better than a hospital grade morphine drip an’ chocolate pudding?” Even through the morphine, that hurt. James hadn’t let him near a mirror; Rumlow couldn’t tell if that was just a coincidence, or deliberate, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to know what he looked like. He’d been in pain before, but getting a building dropped on you would slow down just about anyone.

James held up a pack of cigarettes, brown wrapped. Nat-Shermans. The ones Rumlow smoked when he was celebrating.

“What the fuck are we celebrating?”

“We’re alive,” James said. He put one hand down on Rumlow’s elbow, one of the few places that didn’t hurt, ache, burn, or twinge. The small patch of relatively unharmed skin was unduly sensitive and James traced his fingers gently over it, sweeping circles along the tender inner skin of Rumlow’s arm. “We’re together.”

Rumlow made another face; his lungs ached with need. James was right; they were celebrating. They were alive. They were free, for the moment. James would take care of him. “I don’t think I can smoke,” Rumlow said, and that hurt, both in the actual pain meaning of the word, and the meaning behind it. He was too weak, too dependent.

James shrugged again. He tore off the cellophane wrapper, tapped the box to pack the tobacco down. He opened the pack, held the dark cigarette between his lips and lit it. Like a pro. Like it was something that he’d done so often the movements were muscle memory. Or something more than muscle memory. The Asset didn’t smoke. Hydra had no reason to allow it, or even offer it. Which must mean Bucky had smoked.

Fuck. Rumlow was going to lose him, lose him to those memories of who he used to be, and-- his chest squeezed again, agony, ripped and tearing, shaking, shattered. Something in his chest broke open, bleeding.

James inhaled, and leaned in close. Before Rumlow could even figure out what he was doing, those plush lips were on his and James was blowing, softly. The taste of tobacco in his mouth. Rumlow inhaled, slow and shallow, drawing the smoke into his lungs as James filtered it for him, made it thin and mild.

Even second hand, shotgunning the cigarette, it burned in his chest, made him light-headed and swimmy. Or maybe that was just James’ mouth, tasting him and the way his tongue moved, delicate and subtle, across Rumlow’s lips.

Rumlow let the smoke back out, curling from his mouth.

Rumlow wasn’t certain when sharing the cigarette became more than that, became apparent that James was _seducing_ him. Somewhere in the nicotine haze and the deeper, darker pool of morphine, there was _want_. Even as his blood heated and raced, Rumlow’s brain was sharp. Cold. Calculating. James was teasing at him, of his own will, in his own mind.

_Can I keep you?_

_Will you stay?_

If Rumlow made James his, some primitive brand, some possessive need, James would stay, would stay with him. Always.

“You want another?” James asked, hand still moving over the few patches of Rumlow where his body wasn’t destroyed.

“Yeah.” And even in the roughness of his voice, smoke-thick and aching, Rumlow knew he was asking for _more_.

James drew more smoke, gave it to Rumlow like the most precious drop of water in the desert. Licked at the cracked and aching mouth. Nudged until Rumlow was forced to loll his head back, displaying his throat.

And then James had no choice, it seemed, except to make love to Rumlow’s neck.

He kissed, thoroughly, sparing no inch of skin in a sensual onslaught against Rumlow’s shattered, scattered nerves. Moved up the line of his jaw, nuzzled softly at the skin just behind his ear. It hurt, damn it hurt, every bit of Rumlow’s body had been battered and bruised, but he didn’t know how to tell James to stop.

Didn’t want him to stop.

A dark current of fear ran under the wanting, but it was swallowed up, discovered and chased away by how excruciatingly gentle James was. Even getting hard hurt; god only knew what his dick looked like, but at least it was still there. Intact enough to _get hard_.

Rumlow turned his head, met James’s mouth with his own. Tasted smoke and the salt-sweat of the man’s skin.

“I’ve got you, Brock,” James promised him. His hand slid beneath the blankets. Ever so soft, gentle. He stroked Rumlow’s dick. Took another draw of smoke and gave it to him, kissed him while the nicotine passed back and forth between them. Fucked his tongue into Rumlow’s mouth with easy urgency.

It was barely enough pressure, like a sustained tease, but it would have to do. Everything else just hurt too fucking much.

More smoke. More touch. More sweet, stubborn kisses. It was the slowest, most agonizing handjob he’d ever gotten. Minutes rolled by and sweat shivered down his neck as James touched him, stroked him. Breathed for him. Moved with him.

By the time Rumlow tipped over the edge, half the pack of smokes was gone. They both tasted of ash and blood, and Rumlow was sobbing aloud with racking, racing need.

“I’ve got you. I won’t let anything happen to you. Be so good to you. I’m yours, everything, anything, you ever want.”

Rumlow managed to get a hand on the back of James’s neck, pulled the man in and rested his forehead against James’s neck. “Love you.” He stiffened, muscles aching, and then--

There was no pleasure so sweet, so exquisite, as relief from pain.

Coming wasn’t the normal jolt of heat and rush, but a tender quiver. Like pulling the blankets up on a cold night and snuggling in.

Only a few moments of blissful, pain-free rapture. Rumlow was holding on, as tight as he could, knowing that the pain was going to seep back in and drown him. But for this moment… James was holding him up.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is Latin: From Nothing comes Nothing
> 
> I know there are multiple meanings to "shotgunning." I picked the one that had to do with cigarettes.


End file.
